Christopher Nolan made an appearance on the Rich Eisen Show, the host asked the “Oppenheimer” director what his “remote drop movie” was.
Eisen explained that a “remote drop movie” is any movie that makes you drop the remote and keep watching when you're flicking through TV channels. Here’s Nolan response:
If there's an old movie playing, I mean, anything by Kubrick, it's a remote drop. And one of the great comedies too, I mean Talladega Nights, I'm never gonna be able to switch that up.
Eisen paused, taken aback by Nolan’s answer, clearly surprised by the Will Ferrell comedy being name-checked, and asked: "Really? The Ballad of Ricky Bobby is a Christopher Nolan remote drop, is that what you're saying?"
Nolan responded with one of that comedy’s most quoted lines: “if you ain't first, you're last.”
Love it. ‘Talladega Night,’ just like other Ferrells “Step Brothers,” “Old School,” and “Anchorman,” is a total guilty pleasure watch. These are comedies that are so self-awarely dumb that they become their own kind of watchable entertainment.
Hey, just because you’re a top-notch filmmaker doesn’t mean you can’t also like the most mainstream, and dumbed-down, of movies. A few years back, Paul Thomas Anderson professed his love for “Venom 2” and “Shang-Chi”? There’s something about a genuinely great director somehow finding things to like in mediocrity.
Nolan has admitted in the past to having a real love for the ‘Fast & Furious’ franchise, adding that he has a “very soft spot” for ‘Tokyo Drift’.
I’m sort of original recipe, the Rob Cohen original. But I’ve got a very soft spot for Tokyo Drift actually. And Justin Lin’s iterations, as they got crazier and bigger and crazier and bigger they became something else, but something else kinda fun.
I don’t abide with Nolan on that one, but I do share his love for the howlingly funny “MacGruber.” Anne Hathaway has mentioned Nolan’s silly penchant for randomly quoting “MacGruber” lines on the set of “The Dark Knight Rises.” It’s still one of the cleverest comedies of the last decade. Taste!